


Taking the Show on the Road

by facetofcathy



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Alternate Universe, Character of Color, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-20
Updated: 2009-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my story for the show_goes_on community on LiveJournal. I picked the prompt, January 20, Team, AU, the team somehow gets stuck on the ship in "Stargate: Universe".</p><p>This is an artifact out of step with reality.  If you're looking for fic for the actual show, Stargate Universe, this is not that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking the Show on the Road

**Author's Note:**

> So as you can read here: [Justin Louis, Jamil Walker Smith join Stargate Universe](http://www.gateworld.net/news/2009/01/justin-louis-jamil-walker-smith-join-stargate-universe/), I've been Jossed before I even posted. I decided to stick with my cast, based on the Character names and descriptions available before this latest news. I like mine better. I think that makes this an Ultra-AU, and I'm okay with that. You can click the links for my cast choices and see their IMDB page (all with photos) if you're unfamiliar with anyone.  
> 

## **Principal Characters**

  


### **The Team:**

  
In case you got confused by season five, I'll list them.  


#### Lt. Col. John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) 

#### Teyla Emmagan (Rachel Luttrell)

#### Ronon Dex (Jason Momoa)

#### Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett)

  


### **The Crew of the Destiny:**

  


#### Col. Everett Young ([Linus Roache](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0730070/) )

You'll recognize Linus Roache from Law and Order where he plays A.D.A. Michael Cutter. If you're outside the target demographic, you may remember him as Robert Carlyle's co-star in Priest. Young is from Boston, which helpfully explains the accent drift.

#### Dr. David Rush ([Robert Carlyle](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001015/) )

A storied career in film and British television, Robert Carlyle has flashed his bum on screen almost as often as Mr. Hewlett. ([Shameless plug for my David/Robbie RPF ficlet.](http://facetofcathy.livejournal.com/52096.html#cutid1) ) Just what is Rush a doctor of though?

#### Lt. Tamara Jon ([Janina Gavankar](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1232470/) )

You might remember her as Sgt. Dusty Mehra on Atlantis. On the Destiny, Gavankar plays Air Force medic Tamara Jon. Rumour has it that Tamara almost passed up the SGC to serve in Afghanistan.

#### Chloe Walker ([Danneel Harris](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1566486/) )

You knew her as Rachel on One Tree Hill, and now this lovely young woman brings a hint of Southern charm to a new galaxy. Still reeling from the death of her father, Chloe is also nursing a broken heart after her actor boyfriend left her for his co-star. She was fleeing the tabloids when she ended up traveling farther than she ever expected to go.

#### Lt. Eli Hitchcock ([Paul James](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1482818/) )

Best known for his role as Calvin on Greek, Paul James is one of Hollywood's new bright stars. As Eli Hitchcock, he's a computer genius and former hacker who hasn't met a code he couldn't crack—it's just people he can't cope with.

#### Lt. Javier Nash ([Rodrigo Santoro](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0763928/) )

After a stint on Lost and a star turn in 300, this Brazilian star returns to television as Lieutenant Javier Nash. Javier was top of his class in the Air Force academy and was quickly recruited by the SGC. He's eager to prove himself as the next Jack O'Neill, but is he up to the challenge?

#### Cpl. Ron Stasiak ([Jared Padalecki](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0655585/) )

You all know Jared as Sam Winchester, now he's stretching his acting muscles, and his biceps, to play Ron Stasiak. Ron's a quiet guy, know for his good humour, and his love of his grandma's perogies.

## Taking the Show on the Road

So then, somewhere at the edge of the Pegasus Galaxy.....

"Fix it, McKay," John says, pacing a tight perimeter and keeping a tighter grip on his P-90.

"I'm trying—I can't just press buttons at random, and this isn't a normal dialing console, but—this one _is_ marked with the symbol for dialing the gate..." Rodney presses down on the button in question, and a series of lights on the console flash, and the gate starts to dial.

"Wonderful, Rodney," Teyla says, sounding relieved.

"Yeah, just in time," Ronon adds from his casual lean against the door. The very closed door. The extremely closed, unable to be opened door. The door John may have unloaded a few rounds into in frustration—right next to the scorch marks from Ronon's blaster.

"Yeah, wonderful," Rodney says, watching the chevrons on the gate light up. "Oh, no, that is not good."

The blue whoosh of an engaging wormhole flares and settles, and the centre of the gate ripples a reassuring blue. "What's not good, McKay? You dialed Atlantis right?"

"It dialed itself; I didn't do a thing. Well, I pressed that one button, but I—nine chevrons engaged."

"Nine," Teyla says, "but that's impossible, isn't it?"

"No, actually. It, ah, it's classified, but it's been done before."

"Dial Atlantis," John says. "We can talk about ninth chevrons when we aren't about to die of asphyxiation in a sealed room. You know, in case you've forgotten the cause of your recent panic attack." He wanted off this stupid planet and out of this damn Ancient outpost with its one-way doors.

"That's just the problem, we can't. This gate will only dial that address," Rodney says.

"You're sure," John says.

"Unfortunately."

"So we go through the gate," Ronon says. "Beats running out of air."

"McKay?" John says.

"Okay—ninth chevron—the SGC figured out how to dial it, found an Ancient ship, the kind of ship that plants gates in the first place. They lost contact with it when its automatic programming took over after they powered it up."

"So this gate goes to what, a ship? Cool." John figures it couldn't be that simple or they'd have stepped through already, but giving Rodney something to scowl over is a small enough service.

"Maybe a ship—maybe a planet in another galaxy. Maybe a space gate."

"Beats running out of air," Ronon says and steps up to the blue ripple. "You got any other ideas?"

"No," Rodney says, and starts to shake again, gasping for the air that isn't that thin. Yet.

John looks at Teyla, and she just looks back, calm, with no doubt in her clear gaze, so he picks up Rodney's pack and tosses it to Ronon. He nods at Teyla and she takes Rodney's left arm, and he takes his right, and they haul him through the event horizon right behind Ronon.

***

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my—not that there is one, but—not dead, not dead," and on and on Rodney goes. Not stopping, not able to stop.

John really should do something, say something. They aren't dead, Rodney is right about that, they are in fact standing in the middle of an arid desert of red rocks and russet sand, with sweeping walls of dunes rising on either side of the gate to stretch away to the horizon where the sand meets a pink sky. That's the good news. The bad news is the latest Rodney panic attack, which, all things considered, isn't the most illogical response to being dragged through the gate to an unknown destination. Ronon drops Rodney's pack, holsters his gun, and steps up behind Rodney and just lifts him straight up in the air. His boots are dangling about six inches off the ground, but Ronon has him in a tight grip, arms across Rodney's chest with fists full of vest right over Rodney's pounding heart.

"I'll put you down when you calm down," Ronon says.

"You, you—now, down now. Are you insane?"

Teyla steps closer and runs her hand gently up and down Rodney's arm. John figures he _really_ should do something. He steps a little closer, and Rodney is still babbling away, but it has more outrage in it and less panic with every breath. John holds out his hand, reaching, not yet touching, and finally lets it settle over Ronon's fist.

"Well now, ain't that just a pretty sight," a voice says from behind Ronon.

Ronon moves in a blur—Rodney is in a heap on the sand, Ronon's blaster is in his hand, and his finger is on the trigger pointing at–

She's gorgeous, long auburn hair, big white smile, one eyebrow raised in something like alarm at Ronon's gun, but she isn't running away—she's just standing there. She looks like a model, even in the ill-filling fatigues, and with that thought comes the delayed realization that the accent had been as familiar as the clothes. Southern—Georgia or Alabama maybe—American anyway.

"Chloe, you idiot, what the hell did I say–" the new voice belongs to the man, in what is unmistakably an SGC uniform, who is scrambling down the slope of the nearest dune. He's as young as the woman, tall, handsome, with dark hair edging into non-regulation territory. He's followed by another guy with a Marine haircut, a Marine set of muscles on a body that could rival Ronon's, and a way with Slavic swear words. He sounds like Radek on a bad day—a day with too much Rodney in it. When the first guy hits level ground he stands still, mostly in front of Chloe and eyes up John and his team. "Sir? That's Atlantis gear isn't it?"

Ronon lowers the gun after a wordless exchange of glances with John and bends to haul Rodney to his feet.

"I'm Lieutenant Javier Nash," the man says briskly, "the big guy is Corporal Stasiak, and the person behind me, who is lucky she didn't get shot, is Chloe Walker."

John starts to introduce his team, but Rodney overrides his words. "You're from the Destiny," he says and it sounds like an accusation. "How the hell did you just happen to be here?"

Lieutenant Nash stands a little straighter and aims his gaze right at John and says, "Sir?"

"Rodney, don't yell at the nice people who have just rescued us, okay. Get to know them a little first."

***

The Destiny has, not Jumpers, but something that might have been the Jumper prototype. It's more spherical than tubular and has barely enough room for all of them. John stretches his neck to get a better look at the controls—controls that don't seem to require anyATA gene or mental interface to operate. Nash seems like a good pilot, and they are soon swallowed up by the bay of a ship that John had caught barely a glimpse of through the small view screen on the Hopper. He'd named the little ship a Planet Hopper before they even got on board, and Rodney had gone off on a rant of epic proportions about the name.

"There's a girl in my house who talks like that." Chloe had said in a soft, slinky drawl. "Real popular too, once the fellas realized how long she could hold her breath."

Ronon had snorted in amusement, and Rodney had yelled, "Oh my god, you're a sorority girl. What the hell is a sorority girl doing in space?"

"Not the first time I've been asked that, honey," she'd said.

"Rodney," Teyla had said quietly, tugging on his arm and dragging him inside the Hopper, "isn't that interface similar to the control panel at the Shrine of Talus?"

Rodney had craned his neck to see the control panel, and he and Teyla had bandied about terms like molecular data storage and intuitive response crystals until John was starting to feel like the slow kid.

"So, Lieutenant," he'd said to Nash, "this thing got any weapons?"

***

Inside, the Destiny certainly seems large, but it doesn't look very Ancient. The colours aren't the serene cool tones of Atlantis where all the technology is hidden away behind panels and, occasionally, the floor. This ship is all hot colours and exposed tech. Rodney's hands flutter and float, reaching to touch each new thing as they're led to the bridge. Teyla snatches one hand and holds on, but he's still staring and muttering sounds of surprise and yearning at every bit of the ship they pass by.

They follow Lieutenant Nash onto the bridge and are summarily ignored by a pair of men in SGC fatigues with uniform jackets not too different from their own Atlantis gear, their heads bent in close consultation. John is pretty sure he knows the guy with the American flag on his sleeve, and if he's right, this is not going to go well. Off to one side, a man and a woman, both painfully young looking, at least to John, are watching the unfolding scene warily. The guy with the Scottish flag on his arm looks up finally, looks them all over and then looks twice at Rodney.

"Dr. McKay," he says, except he pronounces it to rhyme with eye.

"McKay," Rodney corrects automatically, "Who the hell are you?"

"This is Dr. David Rush, Doctor," the American says. "He's the project head on the Destiny, and I'm Colonel Young." He turns away from Rodney and eyes up John. Yup, not going to go well. "Any you're Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard, if I'm not mistaken," he says blandly.

"That's me, and Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex—my team from Atlantis. So, Colonel, care to tell us where we are?"

"I'd love to, as soon as you tell me how you managed to be on that planet? Should I be having our medical staff check you over? Make sure you're not replicators?"

"Sir?" the woman speaks up, sounding concerned.

"Don't worry, medic. It won't come to that."

If she is their medical staff, they likely don't have the barest chance of running any real tests on John and his team. That leaves a slightly more intrusive and painful way of proving their humanity. Ronon would probably use his own knife just to piss Young off. He's standing absolutely still, staring at the Colonel in the way that means he'll happily use that knife on Young if he gives him a reason. Ronon is a fine judge of character.

"Do you even know where we are? Rodney demands.

"We know where we are, we just can't do anything about it," Rush says. "The ship is on a pre-programmed course, and we haven't been able to crack the programming."

"Oh please," Rodney says. "I'll have it done by lunch. Please tell me you have food on board?" Rodney continues on, listing his minimum necessary supplies for existence, but John is watching their other very young, silent observer. He had rolled his eyes hard at Rodney's boasts.

"McKay," John says sharply. "Why don't you see if you and..." John tips a look at the fellow, and he grudgingly introduces himself as Lieutenant Hitchcock. "Why don't you see if the good Lieutenant will show you around while I discuss things with the Colonel and Dr. Rush."

"Fine, but I get Teyla."

Teyla just raises a brow at Rodney's turn of phrase.

"What?" Rodney says. "Unless I'm very much mistaken, other than me, she knows more about Ancient systems than anyone else on this ship. You'll just have to do without her, Sheppard."

"Okay, buddy, whatever you need," John says, and turns to his superior officer and smiles as naturally as he can. "Colonel, Doctor, if that's all okay with you?"

***

John had sent Ronon off to wander the ship, see what he could see, and then he had a stilted meeting with Young and Rush. Rush seemed to be willing to take his cue from Young and wasn't exactly friendliness personified. If what Cam Mitchell had told him the last time they'd shared a bottle of bourbon was on the money, Young had been one of the favourites for the job that ultimately went to Colonel Carter—Commander of Atlantis. That is not a version of reality John would have been happy to live through. Rush, it turned out, is not a physicist or even an engineer; he's an anthropologist who had studied Ancient societies extensively. Some of his work on theOri had been the driving force behind IOA policy during the recently ended conflict. John slouched out of the Colonel's office, not very confident of their handle on their situation, and was wondering how long he could keep Rodney from finding out about Rush.

Ronon appears, just as John is about to set out to look for him. "We should find Rodney and Teyla," he says.

"Yeah? Problems?"

"No, just that Stasiak guy, the Marine? He showed me the kitchens. They've got lots of food—good stuff. We should get McKay fed."

"Good thinking," John says, and claps Ronon on the shoulder. Just feeling that hard muscle under his hand is reassuring, especially when not much else is. "Let's head back to the bridge, see if McKay's pulled a miracle out of his ass yet."

"That's where he keeps them, huh?"

***

They find Teyla and Rodney on the bridge, with Lieutenant Hitchcock idly spinning back and forth in his chair, watching them while pretending not to. Rodney is punching keys on his tablet, cables snake out and connect it to three different bridge consoles, and Ancient text scrolls rapidly across several screens.

"Hey guys," John says, and Rodney grunts something unintelligible. Lieutenant Hitchcock's lazy-seeming scrutiny sharpens a bit. "Ronon found the mess."

"Ah, yes," Rodney says, and grins over his shoulder. "I knew we kept him around for something."

"You mean other than saving your ass every other day?" Ronon asks mildly.

"His humility is very refreshing as well," Teyla says and stretches her arms over her head.

"See this is why we can't ever go anywhere nice," John says sulkily. "All this bickering you three do."

"Right, Colonel Propriety, show me this mess hall and what passes for food here. I need a break." Rodney marches over to the door and tries to lead the way, even though he doesn't know where he's going.

***

The mess hall is the domain of Corporal Stasiak, and he ducks his head and smiles shyly when the four of them troop in. Teyla stops at the door and her face goes completely blank. John thinks for a minute she's sensed a Wraith even though they're in the wrong galaxy for that, but when the smell hits him, he knows what had stopped her cold. He knows that odour.

"Oh my god, not that—but is that?" Rodney crosses to the pans under warming lamps and inhales deeply. "Cabbage rolls, I love cabbage rolls. Oh, this almost makes the whole stuck on a runaway ship worth it, but not, but–"

"Would you like a plate, sir?" Stasiak says softly.

"Better just give him two," Ronon says.

The Corporal seems to overcome his shyness a little in the face of Rodney's obvious enthusiasm for the food. He tells them that it's his grandmother's recipe, as well as he remembers it, and then regales them with a tale of trying to make perogies with reconstituted potato flakes. He eventually excuses himself to return to his other duties, and John is happy to finally be alone with his team.

"So where do we stand, McKay?" he says.

"Up a creek but possibly with a paddle," Rodney says.

"Possibly?"

"So far, what Hitchcock has been concentrating on is cracking the programming so they can control the ship. And yes, before you ask, I was a bit optimistic in my prediction earlier. It's not the same sort of coding that the Ancients who built Atlantis, and everything else in Pegasus, used. It's simple code, fairly easy to understand, but breaking the security protocols and altering it is proving, well, more than a little challenging. The Ancients who built this ship were paranoid about someone taking it over, which would be an interesting puzzle for some soft scientist like Jackson to gnaw on, but doesn't help us at all."

"So are we stuck here then?" Ronon asks.

"Well, for the time being," Rodney says. "Look, bottom line here—the three of us," Rodney swings a hand through an arc to indicate Ronon and John, "we could get along okay here, I could spend years studying this ship and its systems, there's ships to fly and almost certainly people to shoot at, and we'd be fine, and I would crack the programming—eventually."

"That's not the way it's going to go, Rodney," John says. Even if he agrees, somewhat, with Rodney's assessment, he wants to get back home, back to Atlantis.

"Well, I know that," Rodney says and rolls his eyes. "Teyla needs to get back to Torren, so back we go—somehow."

***

They were falling into routines on the Destiny—familiar, yet not. Ronon and John still run every morning, boots pounding on Ancient not-quite metal floors, only now Corporal Stasiak pounds along beside them most days. Stasiak likes to stay in the comfortable shadow of Ronon, who teases him about his cooking and his really bad running form, but never about how much he misses his grandmother.

Teyla and Tamara take a break together around mid-day. They have lunch, work-out, meditate. John occasionally joins the bantos practice, but he gives the meditation a wide berth. "I cannot maintain the level of concentration that Rodney has, without some respite" Teyla had admitted one day. "His focus, his commitment to his work, I cannot match it. I look at him and I think I see what Ronon must have been like as a runner."

John keeps mostly to himself. Chloe—she both attracts and repels him, and he knows why, so he tries to avoid her. She smiles, slow and sultry, like she knows that she needs to seduce everyone she meets. She knows that she isn't enough, that she has to entice and charm and make people come to her. She poses herself, lets her lips curve into a smile, a quick flash of teeth, but her eyes never stop watching, calculating, judging her performance in the reactions of her audience. She ignores Tamara and Teyla, disdains both Rodney and Ronon, who ignore her for the same reason—they don't understand what purpose she serves, but she has Nash and Young both giving her lingering looks, glances that skitter away and return, while she performs her magic act—making them see what isn't quite real. John can see the reality behind the presentation, the anger, the disappointment, the _fear_ that the smiles and the canted hips and the almost crude jokes cover up. He has the advantage of long years of experience decoding that sort of routine, though.

John avoids Nash too, as much as he can. The kid is maybe a little infatuated with John, wanting to hear all about his experiences on Atlantis; he thinks they're tales of glorious heroics instead of the horror stories they really are. Nash is brash and confident, the kind of naive and innocent kid that John's pretty sure he never was. In the long trail of John's career, he'd never been surprised when he disappointed his superiors, when what they valued didn't matter to him and viceversa . The surprise comes when someone like Nash looks up to him, and John wishes he could hang around with Rodney more; his cynicism and sarcasm seem to keep all the fresh young faces at bay, all except Hitchcock anyway. Hanging around Rodney would also keep him from being so crushingly bored all the time, but he doesn't want to interrupt the work and interfere with their chances of getting off the Destiny and back home.

They make a habit of meeting in the mess hall late in the evening, after the Destiny crew has left for their quarters or their duty shifts. Rodney and Teyla bring them up to date on their progress, and John and Ronon occasionally drop tidbits of gossip they've picked up. Rodney had finally found out Rush's field and had spent one entire evening deriding his very existence. It turned out that Rush considered himself something of an amateur physicist as well as an anthropologist, and he'd made the mistake of saying as much to Rodney. After the outburst that had prompted, the command team kept to the Colonel's office where they were reportedly trying to analyze the ship's database for information about the galaxy they were travelling through.

They had finished eating and are still sitting around the table, all of them reluctant to call it a night and admit that they'll be stuck here yet another day. Letting Rodney talk was a good way to fill the time, so John asks about Lieutenant Hitchcock.

"He's sullen and uncooperative at the best of times, and today he was especially annoying," Rodney says, "but–"

"Teyla, you didn't let Rodney yell at him too much, did you?" John says, mostly joking.

"It was an urge difficult to resist, but we both managed," she says.

"Yes, yes, I behaved, Sheppard," Rodney says sourly. "Honestly, I can function just fine out of your sight for whole giant blocks of time."

"As long as Teyla's there to keep you in line," Ronon says.

"You all act like I'm some sort of megalomaniac, teetering on the edge of a psychotic break or something."

"And?" John says with a smirk

"And, you may be exaggerating. Slightly. Anyway, the guy's got something underneath the listlessness and the sneer. He hasn't had the education he should have had, and he's been woefully underutilized by the air force, but he's maybe not completely useless."

"I forget," Ronon says, "is that higher in ranking than _not a total moron_?"

"It's just below _has some competence_ isn't it?" John says.

"I think it's above both of those," Teyla says.

"You guys are hilarious—you should take your act on the road."

"We did," Ronon says flatly

"Yeah, about that—making any progress?" John asks.

"Hmm, hard to say. I've analyzed the data I pulled off the console in the Temple of Asphyxia, and I looked over everything they have here on the whole ninth chevron thing. If I can figure out how to program a DHD, we should theoretically be able to dial Atlantis, or more probably the Alpha site or somewhere else in Pegasus, in case we need to dial and dash."

"Theoretically?"

"We will require an external power source," Teyla says quietly.

"So, we'll find one," John says.

"Yeah, under a rock or something," Rodney says. "Look, the way this ship is programmed, they hit orbit above a planet and they only stay for 27.31 hours, not a long time to search for handy ZPMs or useful substitutes."

"What about the database that Young and Rush are working on, maybe it will give us a clue about what's on these planets?" Ronon says. John grins at Ronon's sneer over Young's name. Ronon has picked up on every bit of nuance of Young's dislike of John, and he returns it tenfold. All John has to do is smile cheerfully at Young while Ronon glowers over his shoulder, and the guy finds an excuse to be elsewhere pretty quick. It's fun.

"It might just, if they ever make any progress on it. They're using some systematic approach that only anthropologists are gifted enough to understand, and it's taking them way too long to pull out anything useful."

"Ronon," Teyla says, with some level of meaning that goes over John's head. He looks from one to the other curiously.

"Yeah," Ronon says with resignation.

"Guys?" John says.

"Dr. Singh, you know, the guy in linguistics?"

"Yeah, he spars with you sometimes, right?"

"Yeah. He asked me once if I had some free time, and well, I can't read Ancient or anything, but he says that helps."

"Helps with what?" Rodney says suspiciously.

"He gets me to run the keyword searches on the database. He says that I don't get bogged down trying to read the results, I just collect the text and pass it on."

"You know how to search the database?" Rodney says.

"Yeah."

"And you never told me?"

"Nah, don't want everybody after me to help. Don't want to end up chained up in the lab getting all pasty and soft."

"I'm naturally fair skinned," Rodney says, well yells, really.

"Any other secret hobbies we don't know about there, Chewie?" John says, and Ronon just smirks at him.

"Why the hell do you let him call you that anyway?" Rodney grouses. John figures Rodney is going to manage to be pissed off about this little revelation for a few days, and they're all going to get it in the ear.

Ronon shrugs. "If he wants to pretend he's Han Solo, what do I care? That just makes you Princess Leia anyway."

"What, no," Rodney says. "I'm clearly Luke Skywalker."

"Nah, that's Teyla," Ronon says.

"I don't believe my father was an evil sorcerer bent on galactic domination," she says firmly.

"Or a whiny kid," Ronon says sourly.

"Oh please, not that again," Rodney says. "If you stop going on about the horror that is the prequels, I promise to personally drive you to George Lucas' house the next time we're on Earth, and you can tell him yourself. And see—Teyla agrees, she's definitely the princess, and I'm Luke Skywalker."

"Whatever you need to believe, McKay."

"I have no objection to being compared to a great leader such as Princess Leia," Teyla says, "but the light sabers are really cool. Explain to me again why Leia doesn't have one? Would the force not be strong in her as well?"

John decides to let Rodney handle that one. He listens with half an ear to the explanation, resigning himself to spending his days keeping Ronon from going for Young's head, and Rodney from yelling at Rush again, at least in public. It will be a nice break from Nash though, the kid's infatuation isn't lessening with time. John keeps trying to shove him at Chloe, but it isn't working too well. They aren't a bad crew of kids really, all in all, but Young basically leaves them to their own devices and that is going to blow up in his face one day. John could always give him some advice, offer up some command wisdom—that might be fun.

John tunes back in to the conversation in time to hear Ronon say, "Earth people are weird."

"Yeah," John and Rodney say in tandem and then share a grin. "We like Atlantis people better," Rodney says.

"As we all do," Teyla says.

"We'll get back there," John says. "Even if Rodney has to build a ZPM, we'll get there."

"Never had any doubts," Ronon says, and stands up. "I'm going to bed, I've got a big day of sitting in front of a computer tomorrow."

"Yeah," John says, "you might as well teach me too, then we can both experience a full day of the Young and Rush show."

"You know people back home say that about us, right?" Rodney says.

"Yeah, but I bet they miss us," John says and frowns, hoping they aren't being missed too much.

"I'm sure everyone does," Teyla says, as they all head for bed and another night on the Destiny.


End file.
